Now, she would willingly give up her body to the cause.
“You love me, Cyprian,” the queen said, stronger now, as something powerful surged through her. She rose to her feet, using the wall for support, and stepped closer to him. “All these years, you have watched me. You have longed to touch me. To taste me. To make me yours.”
Her words were poison.
She, the tipped arrow, aimed for the kill.
“You will take me as your lover,” the queen whispered. “And you will come to me, night after night. Until you can no longer look upon your wife without wishing to replace her.”
Her captor glared at her, trembling with a rage that he had been so desperately trying to hide these past two years.
Tonight, she would win.
“I...love...you?” he said, through gritted teeth.
A question, still.
She must try harder.
“You love me, Cyprian Cortas,” she whispered, putting everything she had into her words. Stepping forward until her breath was on his lips. Until her chest pressed against his, and she grasped his hands, guiding them around to the lowest part of her back. “You love me, and you will make me yours tonight.”
“I...love you,” he whispered.
“Again,” she said. “Say it again.”
His eyes met hers. “I love you, Klaren.”
She took his hands, lifted them to the front ties of her thin gown.
“Then show me.”
A growl rumbled from his lips as pressed himself against her.
“I love you,” he said again.
This time, she knew it had worked.
He meant it.
They spent the rest of the night together, tangled in the sheets.
Tangled in her lies.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
* * *
ANDROMA
“IT’S A MASTERPIECE, really,” Gilly said as she sat with her chin resting on her folded hands, examining Valen’s lacerated back.
“A masterpiece if you’re someone like Soyina,” Lira said. “We’ll likely never see her again, especially if Nor catches wind of her helping us.”
“Soyina enjoys delivering pain,” Gilly commented from across the med table. “Right, Andi?”
“What?” Andi looked up to see the two girls watching her.
“Still considering whether or not to kill Dextro?” Lira asked.
The girls, apparently, had heard the entire explosive fight go down. Andi’s and Dex’s screams could be heard echoing through the halls of the ship. They had found Andi afterward, when she’d emerged from her quarters. The tears had dried, and the girls spent time sitting with her in silence.
No music, no laughter. Just a few moments of quiet that allowed her mind to reset.
Now, a few hours later, her mood had improved. Her thoughts were still muddled, her emotions were still raw, but her body felt strangely lighter. As if hearing the truth from Dex, whether she had wanted to or not, had lifted a weight from her shoulders that she’d carried for years.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Andi said with a heavy sigh.
Lira watched her closely. “Later,” she said. “Otherwise, it will consume you.”
Andi nodded, knowing Lira—as always—was right. She leaned back in her chair, wincing as the pain in her chest flared up. “That damned stunner.”
Lira practically growled beside her. “The next job you go on will be with us watching your back.” She sighed and ran a hand across her hairless head. “If I ever see that Revivalist again, I will personally deliver my own special dose of pain, and we’ll see how she enjoys it.”
Andi smiled, despite the ache still pulsing in her chest. “I don’t doubt that you will.”
“Did she really shoot you?” Gilly asked. “Dex, too?” Andi nodded, and the gunner’s eyes widened. “I can’t believe I didn’t get to meet her. Can she really bring people back to life?”
Andi shrugged. “She claims she’s capable of that.”
The med bay door slid open with a cool hiss, and Breck stomped in. “Ladies,” she said impatiently, tucking her hair behind her ears. “I’m not interested in dining alone with Dextro tonight. We have a ship stocked with actual edible food since taking on this job. Come enjoy it with us.”
Gilly and Lira stood from their places on either side of Valen, but Andi stayed put, unwilling to move.
She’d helped Alfie clean his wounds, the blood-soaked rags now piled high in the corner of the small white room. Vials of his blood, freshly drawn by Alfie, were sitting in a testing box beside the rags. The AI wanted to ensure Valen hadn’t picked up any diseases or been injected with any strange pathogens during his time in Lunamere.
Valen’s back looked cleaner, but by no means was it in better shape. It made her ache just to look at it, imagining the lash of the electric whips that caused it, ripping and shredding and burning.
“Andi?” Lira’s voice drew Andi’s attention back to her crew.
She looked away from Valen to smile softly at the three of them. Gilly was standing on tiptoe, still trying her best to get a good look at Valen’s wounds. Andi waved a hand, which, she noted, was still covered in remnants of the battle waged in Lunamere. “Go on without me. I’m going to stay. Someone should be here with him when he wakes.”
Breck shrugged and pulled Gilly along with her, but Lira stopped for a moment.
“There’s a fissure in you. I can sense it even from here.” Lira loosed a gentle sigh before explaining her words. But when she did, they sunk like a rock into Andi’s gut. “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to choose between forgiveness or hate. And you and I both know which one is harder to live with.”
She didn’t wait for Andi to answer. She simply turned, graceful as a bird, and left the room.
*
Andi waited by Valen’s side all night, unsure of why she stayed.
Unsure of why she couldn’t look away from the lashes on his back that crisscrossed his skin like ribbons, or the bruises blooming across his pale skin like paint.
Valen Cortas had never been Andi’s favorite person. She’d hardly known him in her old life. He’d been strange and silent and always seemed to be watching with eyes a little too interested in keeping track of her.
But he was a Cortas.
He was a piece of Kalee.
And seeing him here reminded Andi of what could have been. Not if she’d stayed and faced the punishment of her trial, but before all of that. Before the night that changed everything. If she hadn’t taken the throttle of the transport ship in her hands, or gunned the engine a little too hard, or looked away for too long to laugh at what Kalee had said...
She could still remember the exact moment of impact. The horrible, mind-melting screech of metal against rock.